


miles from way back when

by I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Mentions of Thomas - Freeform, canon-typical level of depression for these two :( but it's also hopeful!, very brief implication of silverflint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27828802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them/pseuds/I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them
Summary: Life in Nassau is nothing like life in aristocratic London, and Captain Flint can be a difficult man to love. Miranda has time to learn.
Relationships: Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	miles from way back when

i.

Miranda wakes, as usual, to the sun on her face. They have been here for months, but they have yet to obtain effective curtains; each morning she tells herself that today she will see to it. But the days have already started blending together, and it makes it easy to push things off. Not helping is her inexperience with making her own purchases. Such entitled helplessness is humiliating now, as is the fact that she had never thought to critically examine it within herself back then.

This will be the day, though, she is sure of it. She must go into town anyway, for some food items her new garden does not provide, and she will inquire about curtains then.

She heads out after breakfast. The horse is in a mood, so it takes her longer than she would like to get him attached to the buggy, but eventually she is able to make the trip.

Hardly anyone looks at her as she wanders the streets of Nassau. After all the gossip circulating about her at any given time amongst her social circle in London, this anonymity is a bit of a novelty. She knows it likely will not last long. James is beginning to draw attention as Captain Flint, and if he takes to piracy with the ferocity and success she expects he will, she suspects that there will be a great many stories spreading about him quite soon. The emerging narrators will take it upon themselves to pry into the life of the man behind the myth, and in the process, they will quickly unearth his relationship with her. What kinds of looks will she receive then, she wonders? Does being the mistress of a pirate captain warrant more or less hatred than being a lord’s unfaithful wife?

Or perhaps she will get ahead of that by prompting rumors that she’s utterly foolish, she muses as the textile merchant she finds listens to her clumsy explanation of what she needs with an unimpressed expression.

As she leaves a while later with an armful of fabric for which she strongly suspects she was overcharged, she hears a commotion coming from the direction of the beach. James has told her to stay far clear of that area unless he is with her, but she has rarely been one to ignore her curiosity.

The fuss, she finds, is related to the arrival of a ship; the first few launches of men are rowing up to the shore. She squints out to the anchored ship and recognizes the _Walrus_ – a fine ship, according to James, though Miranda doesn’t know anything about that. He’d brought her down here to see her when he gained his captaincy. He had clearly been trying to look grim – the weight of who and what he was about to become was and is something they are both very conscious of – but underneath that, she had seen distinct traces of pride.

It will be some time before he can finish here, unloading his cargo, negotiating with the traders, talking with whoever else he needs to talk with, so she decides to finish her shopping and go wait for him at home. He won’t want his crew seeing her, anyway.

She regrets her choice as soon as she is back at the house. She should have tried to see him, or at least tried asking someone if they knew how his voyage had gone. It might have given her a sense of what to expect when he gets here: is he injured? what kind of mood is he in?

There is nothing to do but wait. She unpacks her purchases – food in its rightful places around the kitchen and pantry, fabric in the bedroom – and then brings out bandages and ointment, just in case.

Wound care: something else she has had to quickly learn. Until recently, the worst injury she had seen was probably Thomas’s broken ankle when he somehow managed to fall down the stairs of a theatre, and then there had been a doctor of the highest quality taking care of everything. Now it seems that some part of James is always bleeding. She wonders if he is being excessively reckless, if he is trying in some way to externalize the pain he feels over what was taken from them. She wonders if he would stop if she brought it up with him. She doubts it.

However he manages to hurt himself, she wishes someone would do a better job of healing him. The _Walrus_ does have a ship’s doctor on hand, she knows. His qualifications may be a bit questionable, but he exists, and so she cannot comprehend how it is that James’s dressings so often need to be changed.

Hours pass, but finally he is here, a bit distant but willing to be kissed, which is not always the case. Sometimes the idea of touching her or letting her touch him seems to horrify him, which she usually infers to mean that he has done something he deems particularly terrible and convinced himself it means he does not deserve affection. Those are usually the times she thinks he is most in need of being touched, but she has not figured out how to delicately persuade him to accept what is good for him. Thomas would do it so effortlessly. But if Thomas were here, it would not be necessary.

“I saw your ship arriving,” she tells James.

“I told you not to go near the beach.”

“Yes, I know. And I told you not to order me about like your men.”

“It’s not an _order_. It’s just dangerous.”

“All those rowdy pirates, yes, I know. And should I also be afraid of you, then?”

He sighs. “Probably.”

She does not address how ridiculous that is. She is afraid _for_ him, perhaps, and certainly afraid of the things he is capable of. But she could never be afraid of _him_. She knows he would sooner die than bring her harm.

She runs her hand through his hair, and he leans into the touch. Softly, she asks, “How was your hunt?”

“Successful.”

“And how are you?”

He kisses her rather than answer, which is answer enough. She lets him get away with the deflection for a long, sweet moment, then gently pulls away.

“Are you injured?”

“Nothing too serious,” he says.

“James.”

Giving her a look like he’s deciding whether he can throw her off, he eventually huffs and rolls up his left sleeve to reveal a nasty, though healing, gash along his forearm.

“Oh, James, really,” she exclaims.

He assures her, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Has it been treated?”

There is a very telling pause, and as she opens her mouth to scold him, or at least demand to know _why_ , he cuts her off by insisting, “I knew it wasn’t serious. There were many other injuries among the crew, most of them much worse than this. I didn’t want to misuse the doctor’s time. I did wash it, I’m not stupid.”

She shakes her head and tugs him over to the table where she has laid out the nursing materials. Once he is seated, she dabs some of the ointment onto a cloth and begins applying it carefully to the wound, frowning when he winces at the sting.

“When did this happen?”

“A few days ago.”

“And you couldn’t have gone to the doctor after he had gotten through the initial rush of patients?”

“I am trying to avoid any indication of weakness, Miranda.”

“Are all those other crewmen who were injured weak?”

“Of course not – well, some of them aren’t very good sailors, but that’s not related – but I am the captain, and a new one at that. My situation is more precarious. I must appear almost invincible.”

“Men,” she mutters. His mouth twitches, and she kisses the corner of his lips. Looking at the cut now, she does see that it’s not so bad as she first thought. More of a scrape, really. It probably won’t even scar, though she hates that she has already seen enough cuts on his body to be able to tell.

She reaches for the bandages, and he asks, “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“Probably not,” she admits. Covering the wound when it was fresh probably would have been wise, but by now there is little point. If it has gone thus far without infection, it will likely be fine. But she must admit to herself that when she tends to his wounds, it is almost always more for her sake than his; it lets her feel as if she is doing _something_. Surely he knows this. She says lightly, “But it will keep you from making a mess should it reopen.”

He shrugs, and permits her to wrap his arm. “You’re getting quite efficient at this,” he remarks quietly.

“Yes,” she says tightly. “Well, this is as skilled as I would like to be. Do try to avoid giving me much more practice, if you can help it.”

Her hands perhaps shake a little as she finishes, and he catches them in his own. “Miranda.” She purses her lips, and he tugs her closer, into his lap. “I’ll try,” he murmurs, maybe even meaning it, as he leans in to kiss her shoulder.

“Good,” she says, as if she believes him, and then they kiss, with the desperation of people trying to forget about pain, and then he carries her to the bedroom and fucks her, and it is good, but at no point do they forget.

James has never been especially talkative after sex, but he never used to be this silent. They lie beside each other for what feels like a very long time, just staring into each other’s eyes and not being able to read anything at all in them.

“You are not here,” she says eventually. Whether his mind is stuck on his ship or still in London with Thomas, she does not know, but it is certainly not in this bed. He chuckles, a hollow sound, and she blinks. “Why in the world are you laughing?”

“Oh, it’s not funny,” he answers. “It’s just that I was about to say the same thing to you.”

ii.

The rain has been coming down for hours now, in harsh torrents. There’s a leak in the roof, near the hearth, that Miranda hadn’t known about, and one next to the window in her bedroom. Water drips steadily and unsympathetically into the house, quickly filling whatever buckets and bowls she sets underneath.

She had thought she knew rain. England was so often gray and wet. She was used to it. But the weather here in the West Indies is so different, unspeakably so. Hotter, yes, but also fiercer, more intense. Just _more_. The storms here are born directly of the very ocean, an extension of it.

James loves the ocean. He claims, sometimes, to hate it, to see it only as a means to an end, something he can and will set aside one day. Sometimes he speaks of Odysseus, of walking away from the sea, walking until he meets people who have never tasted salt. He says that is what he wants, and she knows he believes what he is saying.

But she knows him, and so she also knows the truth. The salt water is in his blood. He will never really be able to walk away from it. That would be like walking away from himself, the one thing no man can ever do, no matter how much he may wish it.

She saw him on the voyage from London to Nassau. He was so still and silent the whole time, statuesque in his grief. Yet a part of him seemed to come alive when he stood at the rail of the ship, staring out at the waves, letting the sea wind rustle his hair. He looked like he belonged there. She remembers being struck by the way his eyes seemed to match the ocean, as if he was a part of it as much as it was a part of him.

He loves the ocean. Not the way he loves her, not the way he loved Thomas. But the way one loves breathing.

And so, because she loves him, she must try to love the ocean too. It is difficult, when he is out there with it and she is here alone, but she finds it within herself to thank it whenever it brings him safely back. But she cannot make herself love the storms.

She is fighting a losing battle with one of the leaks when he arrives, accompanied by a flurry of water and leaves that sweep in before he can slam the door closed behind him.

“Stay there,” she tells him, “I don’t want you dripping everywhere.”

When she gets back from fetching him a towel, he’s naked, already having stripped off his wet clothing, which he’s awkwardly holding in a crumpled-up bundle over a puddle as if trying to contain it. Years ago, she would have looked over his body with heat behind her gaze. Now it is mostly a cursory examination, checking for new wounds – a few cuts, but nothing serious.

They trade, clothes for towel, and as she spreads the clothes out in front of the fire, he dries himself and then makes a vague attempt at cleaning the floor near the door.

With all that done, she steps into his arms. His body is still slightly damp, but she focuses more on the way he sinks into her, like his exhaustion is bone-deep and he needs her to prop him up.

“Foolish man,” she chides gently. “You should have waited for the storm to let up before riding out here.”

“Wanted to see you,” he mutters into her hair.

“Come to bed,” she whispers, and he nods and lets her guide him, although he knows the way.

They have slow, lazy sex that doesn’t really satisfy either of them. Miranda tells herself it’s because they simply don’t have the energy for anything better, and not because something has broken between them.

Afterwards, she says, “The roof needs repairs.”

“I’ll hire someone when I go back to town.”

“And when will that be?”

“Tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing to say. She kisses his chest. His skin tastes like salt.

iii.

Sometimes he doesn’t touch her at all.

Today is one of those days, it seems. He had been gone longer than he often is, so she had hoped – but no, better not to dwell on what if. What she got was a curt grunt in lieu of a greeting as he brushed past her, not meeting her eyes. He smells like gunpowder. There are rips in his shirt, and blood stains. He doesn’t look injured, so the blood must not be his. It’s not much of a comfort.

He stomps over to the bookshelf, picks up one book and then another, glancing balefully at each one before putting them back with more force than she likes.

She boils water for tea, even though she knows he never drinks it when he’s in a mood like this.

“We’re going to need to bring up more firewood from the cellar,” she comments. Not that anything related to this house involves much of a _we_ anymore when it comes down to it. But this was meant to be their home, and she likes to pretend that it is.

“Fine,” he says, and marches right back out of the house, which – for God’s sake, James, _really_ – was not what she meant.

He comes back with an armful and dumps it in the basket with a clatter. She bites out a thank you, which he doesn’t acknowledge. He just kicks off his boots and grumbles, “I’m taking a nap.”

“Fine.”

While he sleeps, she drinks her tea, then rubs blood and mud off his boots and sets them neatly by the door, then sits with her restlessness for an hour while occasionally turning the pages of a book she isn’t really reading.

Sometimes when he’s like this she wishes he would just stay away. Sometimes she hates herself for even thinking it. She loves him, and she wants him here. She is grateful for any moment she can have with him, she tells herself.

But the truth is that sometimes she hates him.

They’re both a bit calmer by the time he wakes, but not by much. He has taken off his coat but not changed his clothes – she’ll probably need to clean the sheets – and he is sleep-rumpled in a way that might be endearing if not for the blood and the residual tension.

He says nothing to her, just sits at the kitchen table and stares into space. She pushes a cup of cold tea in his direction, not knowing what message she is even trying to send with the gesture but knowing it’s spiteful. He ignores it.

She makes dinner. She never used to cook before coming here, but as with everything else, she has had time to learn. They learned together, in fact, her and James. She had always had servants; he had always relied either on ship’s cooks or taverns. These days, that is still mostly true for him, but in those early days here they had foolishly thought he would have more time on shore, and they had wanted to be partners in their life here, each shouldering a part of the burden, each knowing how to run their household. And so they had spent much of their free time for months experimenting in the kitchen. She had asked for recommendations at the market; he had carefully observed his new crew’s cook at work; they compared notes and stood side by side at the hearth putting their new knowledge into action.

Now he just sits there and watches her cook with a hollowness behind his eyes, and takes his food with a mumble vaguely resembling thanks.

They eat, but the ravenous emptiness that exists within them both now is not satiated, as it never is. James stays for four days, and they are all like this. Barely any speaking, barely any touch. At night they lie on opposite sides of the bed, barely sleeping. Just before he leaves, he presses a hard, dry kiss to the center of her forehead, and she does not start crying until the door is firmly closed behind him.

iv.

“I recognize you,” James says. “You recognize me?”

“Yes.”

In the moment, it feels like this conversation is about finding some sort of closure, but as they sit in fond, contemplative silence afterwards, it seems more like the beginning of something, something Miranda finds herself buzzing to explore.

There is something in the air between them now. They spend an hour circling around each other, eyes meeting and darting away almost shyly. Whenever they get close, they make contact, just fingers pressing together, or a feather-light kiss on the cheek, or a bracing hand on the back in passing. Small touches, but they have not had this kind of easy physical affection in years.

It is not enough for Miranda. Nothing he gives her is ever enough anymore. But for once, she is certain that she could ask for more and get it.

Abigail returns and goes to sleep, though she will not stay asleep for long if James keeps walking around the cabin pretending he has things to be doing. Miranda intercepts him at the bookshelf, catching his face between her hands and sealing their lips together with a gentle forcefulness, a sureness, that she has not felt in a long time. His muffled sound of surprise fades into something more pleased, and he surges against her before drawing back and gasping, “Not here,” with a glance toward Abigail.

They move swiftly through the ship, settling on a storage space near the galley. James presses her against the door as soon as it closes and kisses her again as if he has been starving for it.

After that it is a frenzy of lips and hands, kisses and touches, pulling at clothes, rediscovering a level of sensation that was once familiar.

“Someone is going to find us,” James pants, though he makes no move to pull her hand out of his trousers.

“Your cook, perhaps,” she teases, partly because their location would make him the most likely candidate, but mostly because there’s a fascinating tension between James and Mr. Silver that she would like to investigate. As she thought he might, he grumbles and hides a blush by bending to kiss her neck; she smiles and reminds him, “Everyone is asleep.”

“Not the watch.”

“They are on deck. It will be fine, James.”

Privately, she thinks that many on his crew would be relieved to know that their captain has a libido after all. She knows that his devotion to her, his uncompromising focus on his plans, and his utter disinterest in whores or other forms of entertainment strike other pirates as unsettling or suspicious. It might do him good to be seen as a man like the rest of them, sneaking off for a fuck during a mission. That does not mean she is any more eager than he is for anyone to see them.

He lifts her onto a barrel to get access under her skirts, and she sighs into his mouth as he presses his hand against her in exactly that way he knows she likes.

“Yes, yes,” she whispers, pulling him closer.

As their bodies rock together, the ship rocks with them.

Miranda closes her eyes. For a moment, between the confined space and the movement and the renewed spark, she can almost imagine that they are not on a ship at all but in a carriage rolling down the streets of London.

But if they are to truly move forward, she cannot cling to a fantasy of a life that is gone. Even if they get the pardons and use them to create a life together that more closely resembles their life then, it will not, cannot, should not be the same, because they are not the same. If she continues trying to fit into a hole that no longer fits, she will never feel right.

She opens her eyes to the darkness of the storeroom. James cups her cheek with his spare hand, and she leans into it. She turns her face and kisses his palm, feeling the callouses of ten years of piracy against her lips and loving him anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm sparrowsfallingfromthesky on tumblr. Title is from Shame by Bastille but initial inspiration came from Think of England by Bear's Den.


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